Parker Conrad

By David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

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Bio

Parker Conrad had a knack for getting in his own way. Like when he worked so many hours as the managing editor of The Crimson that the Harvard undergraduate ended up skipping class for a year and failed out. (He had to leave Harvard for a year, but returned and ultimately graduated.) Or when he landed a cushy job at a prominent biotechnology firm in Santa Monica only to quit out of boredom with the vague idea of wanting to build an amorphous start-up in San Francisco. (He was so broke that he and his friend crashed at his buddy’s grandparent’s empty apartment in a retirement community. They had to sneak in and out of it because no one under the age of 65 was allowed to live there). Or when he got pushed out of that same start-up by that same buddy after they eventually moved out and stopped getting along. Or, most recently, when he resigned from one of the fastest-growing companies in recent Silicon Valley history, Zenefits, after coming under fire for overseeing “inadequate” compliance measures.

Conrad launched Zenefits—a cloud-based software company that helps small businesses manage their human resources operations—in 2013, and it quickly ballooned to one of the buzziest symbols of the burgeoning tech bubble. After just two years, the company grew to 1,600 employees, 10,000 customers, and a $4.5-billion valuation. But in February of 2016, it became clear how much pressure Zenefits was under to keep up that breakneck pace. The California Department of Insurance was investigating the company, which allegedly was allowing its agents to cut corners in order to obtain licenses more quickly, and thus, sign up for Zenefits faster. Conrad was swiftly replaced by the company’s C.O.O. Shortly thereafter, the company said it was laying off 17 percent of its workforce.